Gay Sex in the 70s

The documentary covers the twelve years in New York between the Stonewall events of 1969 and the first press reports on AIDS in 1981. Thirteen men and one woman look back on those years: Manhattan, Fire Island, the clubs, the piers, a sense of freedom that seemed to have no end. What is being described is also the process of coming out from under shame. Joseph F. Lovett's documentary neither sanctifies the period nor condemns it. Among those speaking is the writer Larry Kramer, and people who look back on those years differently sit together in the film. The heaviest part of the telling is its ending: most of these people lost their friends within a few years. There is a great deal of archive photography and home video.